Larsen inducted into Tea Area High School Hall of Fame

The Tea Area School District inducted Wayne Larsen (pictured at right) and the 2011 Boys State Track Team into the district’s Hall of Fame during homecoming on Sept. 27.

Larsen, who has served as the district’s operations manager for the past nine years, played a large part in the district splitting from the Lennox district in 2002. Larsen served on the Lennox school board and was on the board the last two years before the split. Larsen, and those working on the split, came up against many roadblocks.

“It just seemed like you worked through a problem somebody’d throw a couple more roadblocks up in front of you. The Department of Ed didn’t want us to split and the governor’s office didn’t want a split,” he said.

After the split, Larsen continued his involvement with the new district and became the district’s business manager in its second year. He spent seven years as the business manager before taking a year off and then serving on the school board for three years.

After his board term was up, the district had grown so much they split the business manager into two roles - business manager and operations manager. Larsen decided to apply for the operations manger role as he would rather do that than the accounting.

During his time as business manager, he worked on construction items too. 

In his time, he was been involved in construction of the high school, middle school, Frontier Elementary, additions to the high school, Frontier and Legacy Elementary, Venture Elementary and now the expansion at the high school. 

“The original high school we started planning for that when we knew we were going to split. It was a year before we actually became a district so during that time we were trying to figure out how we were going to design the original high school,” Larsen said.

Future building plans could be remodeling the existing high school and another elementary school.

Before coming to the district, Larsen spent 20 years working as a petroleum engineer in the oil industry with Chevron. Larsen and his wife, Margaret, bought some land north of Tea about five years before he left the oil industry and started planting trees. At the time of split, he was doing the tree farm 100 percent of the time.

Their children, Amanda and Matt, both graduated from Lennox. Both kids were in high school during the split and wanted to finish with the district they started in.

“When we were going through the school split stuff, my family was very supportive. I spent a ton of time away. I didn’t miss a lot of activities, but a lot of activities I showed up in my tree spade truck. Margaret was supportive of me making that happen,” Larsen said.

Larsen appreciates the induction into the Hall of Fame. 

“It’s recognition that you put into the school district. It’s a really nice honor,” he said.